Emin Gün Sirer: "LN requires either that people purchase liquidity, which is very expensive for a volatile asset, or that they centralize at shared hubs. A shared, centralized financial hub that looks after your coins and charges you various fees already exists and it's called a bank."

If you let the blocks get full: how are you supposed to know when a blocksize increase is actually needed? Fees don't tell you much: because the supply is inelastic, with respect to price. That means the fees will be very volatile.

The Bitcoin Cash strategy makes it easy to determine when to raise the block-size: just keep the maximum bock-size at least 10x larger than the average transaction volume.

Luke has many times said he supports a block size increase hard fork in the future - I believe 2024. He even had a BIP about it. This is the distant future, of course, and perhaps "too late". But Luke is also clearly among the most extreme of those who have publicly taken positions on the matter.

how are you supposed to know when a blocksize increase is actually needed?

I don't have a good answer, but I'm not sure you are asking the right question either. I strongly suspect that BCH's security model as the block subsidy dwindles is bad, if there isn't a backlog. I do not know whether BTC's fee markets will work out either; I think this is one of the biggest questions/fears about whether this whole thing will work out over the next decade or so.

I'm not so sure about that; it is certainly a horrible thing for the stability of the consensus mechanism, and could easily result in liveness problems, extreme selfish mining, and perhaps even majority attacks.

If you like reading papers, I suggest reading "On the Instability of Bitcoin without the block reward" and "The Gap Game".

"On the Instability of Bitcoin without the block reward" appears to assume that miners always have an electricity cost > 0, so will always need to stop mining after a block is found.

However, because electricity can not be (easily) stored, the marginal cost of the electricity to the miner may be zero, or even less than zero. For example, dumping excess wind or solar power into resistive heating elements may be the only alternative to mining during peak supply. Nuclear power, one the other hand, does not have the ability to respond to sudden changes in demand. [This results in a negative marginal cost for electricity.] (https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/why-power-prices-turn-negative)

The abstract of "The Gap Game" appears to assume "Blockchain bandwidth limits lead users to pay increasing fees in order to prioritize their transactions." So not sure how useful that one will be.

I strongly suspect that BCH's security model as the block subsidy dwindles is bad, if there isn't a backlog. I do not know whether BTC's fee markets will work out either; I think this is one of the biggest questions/fears about whether this whole thing will work out over the next decade or so.

Good thing we bet the farm on this strategy and kicked out all the critics of it, calling them trolls and idiots, and making fun of the original strategy of p2p cash, which was working until the new regime changed the strategy without any scientific justification, or any evidence that they could even build the thing they were promising.

LN is reduced trust, not trustless. To participate in a Lightning Network you must trust your channel partner to route your funds when asked. He can block you. It's true he can't easily steal your money, though Lightning is categorically less secure than an equivalent onchain wallet. That's why Lightning is reduced trust. But not zero trust.

Sure, I won't argue with you there. We could probably squabble with semantics regarding the term "trustless", but it is certainly true that LN has a security model with much stronger assumptions than cold storage and on-chain transactions.

EDIT: To be clear, I didn't say trustless in my OP, but rather custodial. I stand by my comment that LN is not inherently custodial.

It is certainly true that LN has a security model with much stronger assumptions than cold storage and on-chain transactions.

This is absolutely and categorically false. You've been terribly misinformed. A Lightning wallet is categorically less secure than an onchain wallet or cold wallet. Lightning transactions enjoy significantly less security than an onchain transaction. Please don't lie.

We are in agreement. "Stronger assumptions" is referring to the stronger assumptions that LN needs in order for funds to be secure. Specifically, LN has liveness assumptions regarding the underlying blockchain; if one cannot get their transactions confirmed within some particular amount of time, they can lose funds. I may not be using the term appropriately, but I hope I have made myself clearer.

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